Plenty has been written about 18-year-old baseball prospect Bryce Harper and plenty has been sold featuring Harper, too.

But until now he’s never had any officially licensed MLB trading cards or game-used MLB memorabilia for the deep-pocketed investors to latch on to.

What’s new? No, it’s not a Bowman baseball card bearing the Washington Nationals logo beside his name — we’ll get that in 2011 — but we’ve got the next-closest thing.

Harper’s first jersey worn in a game as a professional — a Nationals home jersey from his Arizona Fall League debut on Oct. 20 — has hit the auction block at MLB.com and already is commanding attention.

The jersey sits at just $2,535 after 36 bids, a relative bargain so far — though the auction does not close until next Sunday, Nov. 21.

Nearly all of those earlier relics from the past are likely gone — let alone the jersey worn in their very first games — but thanks to the MLB Authentication Program some of these potential treasures will be saved from the anonymity of the equipment manager’s mountains of work.

While this jersey certainly won’t be the last Harper artifact to hit the auction block, there can only be one first jersey as a pro. (Well, unless he wore several during the game … ) And, sure, he’ll also have a first MLB jersey once he hits spring training for the first time — and then the first time he plays in The Show — but you can bet that those jerseys might be a little more important to the player who just might be the next rookie to capture the national headlines on the Nationals.

However, it’sworth stating that the Nationals have changed their uniform designs, so none of those jerseys will look like this one once the No. 1 overall draft pick makes his debut(s).

What will bidding end at? I personally expect it to top $10,000, but we’ll have to wait and see.

The card manufacturers are normally trying to buy the cheapest items possible for their products, why would you think they would buy Harper's first jersey? It's much more likely they will buy one worn a week later for 1/10 the price.

Im glad topps isnt buying it. Let a real collector have it. If they did buy it They would have butchered it into some crap off centered card then say oops thats the fake one we made the real one will be later in the year but we will do wrapper trades for pieces of it.